Creative Destruction - Honest Conversations About Farming, Business, And Life

Farmer John Suscovich of Camps Road Farm and FarmMarketingSolutions.com answers the question, "What breeds of broilers do you raise?"To learn more about John and see all of the ASK John episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/john.   If you like the show, please support the show by making a contribution at permaculturevoices.com/ilikevoices

Not every business will work, but over the course of a career odds are, one idea will work.     If you want to be an entrepreneur, then it’s up to you to smartly continue on until you find it.  Because you can’t win the race, unless you finish the race.   But can you find that right idea?     Many of people don’t think that they can.     And it’s that defeating self talk that keeps many people from succeeding, and many more of even starting in the first place, thereby having no chance at future success.     This episode is geared at the entrepreneurs and the wantrepreneurs who are listening; the ones who think they can and the ones who think they can’t.    Because either way, you’re right.   In today’s show, I am talking with entrepreneur, and business owner Philippe Choiniere of Oneka.   Philippe didn’t have the ideal road to become a business owner (none of us do).   He started as as a professional hockey player and now finds himself owning a leading sustainable personal care products line.   Likely not th

Homesteader Justin Rhodes of AbundantPermaculture.com talks about how he feeds his 30 chickens for just $1.25 per day. To learn more about Justin and see all of the ASK Justin episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/justin.

If we go back to where we left of Season One of the show, it was December and there really wasn't any crop production happening on the land itself for Green City Acres. At that time some of the land was sitting fallow waiting for future planting in the spring, and some of the land was occupied by dormant crops that had been planted a few months earlier in the fall. Let's find out how much Curtis' total farm has been quietly in production throughout the winter, with beds holding overwintered crops, and why. This episode also covers overwintering crops, prepping beds with tarps and stale seed bedding, and dealing with the shoulder season day length changes. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer Support the show at permaculturevoices.com/support

Farmer John Suscovtich of Camps Road Farm and FarmMarketingSolutions.com answers the question, "Are pastured broilers profitable?"To learn more about John and see all of the ASK John episodes visit permaculturevoices.com/john.

A new phenomenon being developed by the US university systems is the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Through his work teaching Permaculture within the Oregon State University Horticulture program, Andrew Millison was given the opportunity to develop an Introduction to Permaculture course in the MOOC format. Freely available to anyone interested, this course is slated to run three times this year with enrollment goals of thousands of students per course. Andrew will explain what a MOOC is and how it can expose and engage thousands of people in the Permaculture concept. Register for the MOOC at open.oregonstate.edu/courses/permaculture/ Learn more at permaculturevoices.com.

We're back for another Season of The Urban Farmer with Curtis Stone.Season Two will kick off on Wednesday, April 6.Just like last year, I am going to follow farmer Curtis Stone on a journey through a full farm season, taking you behind the scenes to see what being a small scale farmer is really like.   This episode is a preview of what's to come.Stay tuned every Wednesday for a new The Urban Farmer with Curtis Stone at permaculturevoices.com/theurbanfarmer.

All of the guests for this episode are listeners of the show.  Listeners just like you.   A few months ago I asked for feedback on the first season of the show, and I received a ton of it. Today, I will share some of it with you. If you submitted feedback for the show and gave me the OK to read it, thank you, this episode is yours.   As humans I think we live in a guru culture.  A culture that puts people on a pedestal.   And that can be dangerous because it creates limiting beliefs.   Beliefs that we could never be like them. Beliefs that we aren't good enough.   Beliefs that we have some sort of unfair disadvantage.   Beliefs that we can't do what they do.   Because they are an expert, and we aren't. A lot of people view Curtis as that expert and put him on that pedestal of knowledge. They create limiting beliefs in their mind and tell themselves, I could never do what Curtis does. I have sat in workshops with Curtis and heard it first hand, time and time again.   And if you believe that, that you could nev

Paul’s central premise is that habitats have immune systems, just like people, and mushroom forming fungi are the foundation of the foodwebs of land based organisms. Our close evolutionary relationship to fungi can be the basis for novel pairings that lead to greater sustainability and immune enhancement. As w​ e are now fully engaged in the 6th Major Extinction (“6 X”) on planet Earth, our biospheres are quickly changing, eroding the life support systems that have allowed humans to ascend. Unless we put into action policies and technologies that can cause a course correction in the very near future, species diversity will continue to plummet, with humans not only being the primary cause, but one of the victims. What can we do? Fungi, particularly mushrooms, offer some powerful, practical solutions, which can be put into practice now. Paul will discuss his groundbreaking research utilizing their cellular networks to create molecular bridges governing the evolution of sustainable habitats. The implications o

Today's episode is actually a rebroadcast of a presentation that Curtis gave in January in San Francisco. The presentation is called Farming in the City. In this presentation, Curtis will take you on a tour of his one third of an acre urban farm, where you will get an inside look at the day to day operations of the farm from vegetable production to sales. Curtis will show how he farms commercially, and profitably, in backyards and on small plots of land in the city, land that he doesn’t own. You’ll learn about the methods and techniques that Curtis has used over the last six years to grow his sales and profits. See video related to this presentation at permaculturevoices.com/tuf44 More on Curtis Stone: The Urban Farmer Book by Curtis Stone Profitable Urban Farming – The Course

If you're a farmer, what are your options for selling product? CSA's, farmers markets, on farm sales, grocery stores, and buying clubs. Buying clubs? It's one of the options that doesn't get talked about a lot. But it's the focus of this episode. In this episode I am talking with Sheri Salatin of Polyface Farms about Polyfaces Metropolitan Buying Clubs. In their words they describe buying clubs as a a local food distribution system that combines the real-time interfaces of online marketing with community-based interaction. These kinds of interfaces, without bricks and mortar, using the internet, create efficiency and economies of scale in local food distribution. Sheri goes into a lot of the specifics about their buying club and talks about how she grew Polyface's buying club from 30 customers to over 6000. 30 to over 600. How they manage their inventory How they started their buying club How their buying club grew How their buying club allowed them to grow the farm If you don't know much about buying clubs

This episode is the reading of the blog post, Soil Life Exploding At Judy Farms, written by Greg Judy. "2010 was our fourth complete year of Holistic High Density Planned Grazing on Judy farms. The last six months on Judy farms have been a real eye opener. We have seen some unique circumstances that have never been witnessed before on our farms. Some of the numbers and sights that we are seeing are going to be hard for you to believe. That is fine, skepticism is good. But………we now have much more hard data that has been collected from permanent transects on our farms. Before we dive into these latest happenings, I want to cover where we started at and the progression we have seen over the last four years. This will give you a time table of where we started at and the length of time that elapsed to the present." To read the full post visit permaculturevoices.com/119

Taylor Walker from Green Dreams Florida joins me. In this episode we talk being a designer, propagating and selling plants, and we get into specific plant species. Some of these are zone specific; some are more universal, like Mulberry. Towards the end of the episode Taylor goes in depth about 5 not so common plant species that make up a nice permaculture plant guild. He’s growing these plants in Zone 9 in Florida, but maybe you can find some microclimates in your own climate zone to take advantage of some of these species. Show Notes: permaculturevoices.com/99

Today is Part 2 of an interview with farmer John Suscovich of Farm Marketing Solutions. You can listen to Part 1 of the interview here. Part Two was recorded a year after Part 1, and was recorded in February 2016. So you will get two perspectives from the same person, separated by a lot time and experiences. You hear about what John learned about life and farming over the course of year and how his farm evolved based on what he's learned. Today's episode focuses on how things have changed on the farm over the last year.  John will talk about what operations he dropped on the farm and why.  He will break down the economics between laying hens and broilers.  And he will talk about the macro concept of focusing on less to do things better overall. See some of John's videos in the show notes at permaculturevoices.com/118.

Today is part one of an interview with farmer John Suscovich.   And today's episode was recorded one year ago in February 2015.  And Part Two was recorded in February 2016. So you will get two perspectives from the same person, separated by a lot time and experiences. You hear about what John learned about life and farming over the course of year and how his farm evolved based on what he's learned. Today's episode will help a lot of your looking to start a farm or a business by tacking on questions such as, why going from intern to full on farmer as a business was a foolish move for John. And what advice he would have for someone just starting out. He will also share his thoughts on taking on part time farming with job versus going full time farming first. And how he deals with a farm that has a diversified product offering. Then in part two we will circle back with John one year later and see how things have changed on the farm, and why they have changed. Because a lot has changed in the last year.   And as

In this episode Curtis and I dissect an article that was published on Alternet on January 1, 2016 by farmer Jaclyn Moyer.   An article titled.... What Nobody Told Me About Small Farming: I Can’t Make a Living - People say we're "rich in other ways," but that doesn't fix the ugly fact that most farms are unsustainable This one is a good one and we cover a lot of business basics such as... Who is your customer? What is their demographic? And what do they want? What are you selling?  Is that the right crop? What are you focusing your time on?  Is that the right thing? And are you the right person to be doing this job. We will break down the article to hopefully help a lot of you avoid some of the troubles that Jaclyn talked about in the article.    Read the article at permaculturevoices.com/tuf43.

Neal Spackman is regreening a portion of the desert that gets 3 inches of rain a year on average, but lately they aren’t even meeting the average. Greening the site by using true cost water accounting, meaning that they only use the equivalent of water that falls onto the site to establish the vegetation. With minimal rainfall, no pre-existing plant life and 100 plus degree summer temperatures, it is no easy task. Throw in the economic and social challenges of the village that he is working with and the task becomes even harder. But despite those challenges, progress is being made, and the sounds of crickets are now being heard. Life is coming back. We heard his story originally in Episode 78, permaculturevoices.com/78, and today we get an update and find out how much life is coming back. Learn more at permaculturevoices.com/116

Marty McDonald will be one of the speakers at PV3 in March 2016.Learn more about PV3 at permaculturevoices.com/pv3.The latest trend in marketing is story marking.  Telling your story in a way that unique, honest, and in a way that resonates with your target market.  But not all stories are created equal.  And not all stories should be told by anyone.  Because a good story told poorly is in affect a bad story.  So what makes a good story?  It's a bit like pornography; you know a good story when you hear it.  But at it's core good stories take us on a journey.  They are easy to follow and resonate with us emotionally.  Good stories are often concise and have a clear theme, which also makes the stories shareable.  Which is something that benefits you as a brand, if your customers can easily retell your story to their friends.In today's show I am joined by marketer Marty McDonald to talk about story marketing.Marty is Creative Director and Founder of egg in Seattle, a 12-year-old (and the first) communications fi

Be very cautious about how much you are imposing on the landscape.  That's something that Darren talked about on this podcast before.  Because it's a big problem out there within the permaculture space.  People doing work on the land because they want to do the work, not because the context of the land justifies that work. It's a mistake that most of us have made.  And it's a mistake that Darren Doherty has made in his career.   With over 2000 clients and 25 years of professional design experience all around the world, Darren has seen a lot and learned a lot. In this episode we'll talk about what he has learned over the last 25 years. Darren shares a lot in this interview and takes on the hard questions like will this method of land design ever catch on? And what are some of the mistakes that he has made in his career.   You'll learn a lot about design in this one, including simple ways to be better than the average farm, and the importance of fiscal discipline. As you go through this episode think about your

Curtis Stone is the owner of Green City Acres, a multi-locational urban farm based out of Kelowna, BC, Canada.In 2014 his farm generated $75,000 in gross sales on 1/3 of an acre, spread over 5 small plots of land that consist of front yards and vacant lots.In this lecture, he will share with you his 10 essentials to profitable urban farming that will help you work less, and make more money at the same time. If you are currently farming, and looking for ways to improve efficiencies on your farm, or just getting started.This presentation could save you thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time by implementing these steps.See the slides from this presentation at permaculturevoices.com/114Learn more from Curtis on the Profitable Urban Farming workshop held in person and online on March 6.  For more information visit permaculturevoices.com/urbanfarmingpv3